Research SummaryDr. Rao's inter-disciplinary research and graduate education programs in environmental and ecological sciences/engineering have covered diverse research interests that have spanned from lab-scale, process-level studies, and network/systems modeling.

Current research and educational interests are focused on: (1) landscape transitions under human impacts, including intensive food production and urbanization, (2) multi-scale modeling/analysis of hydrologic and biogeochemical responses of agricultural and urban catchments under natural and anthropogenic forcing; and (3) resilience analysis of coupled, complex (natural, engineered, social) systems, including inter- dependence of infrastructure networks and systems.

Past projects have involved development and use of models for research purposes and for decision making, with applications in catchment-scale water-quality analyses; aquifer-scale studies on industrial land uses & assessments; groundwater vulnerability, contaminated site remediation, and watershed management.